When Buck Billionaire issues a call
to all renegades around the world to participate in his Renegade Racing
adventure, he receives more responses than he can believe. It seems
everyone considers themselves to be a renegade of some form or another.

From tens of thousands of entries Buck selects twelve invites from such
diverse places as America, England, Jamaica, the Russian Federation,
Transylvania, and India. Each feels that they're a renegade from their
chosen profession and/or life-style. And they each believe that winning
the race is the solution to their renegade status, a way to bring
themselves back in line with their homes, professions, or peoples.

So, here's your chance to choose your favorite character and make waves
like never before. Put the pedal to the metal and beat your opponents
with raw speed and skill. Or, if that doesn't work, just blow 'em out of
the water!

Genre:

Renegade Racers is a cartoon racing
game that is set in a style made popular by the likes of Mario Kart.

Sound
and Vision:

With so many cartoon style racing
games already available on PSX I was hardly over-enthusiastic about
ploughing through Renegade Racers for reviewing purposes. I mean... it
will hardly have the depth of GT2, or the speed of Rollcage 2, or even
the commentary of F1 '99, now will it?

The CG intro is very good, briefly depicting each of the characters in
their home environment. Surprisingly the in-game graphics prove to be an
equal match over the opening trailers. The polygon sets are so brightly
colored that a health warning should be issued recommending the wearing
of shades.

Although each set of levels follow a theme almost all of them involve
powering a jet-boat along a winding river. The water is a solid deep
slab of blue with a few light ripples on the surface littered with small
power-up crates freely bobbing around. There is a small grass, or sand,
embankment on each side of the river allowing the corners to be slightly
cut, but watch out for ramps and short-cuts taking the jet-boat out of
the water and onto dry land for brief periods.

Not all of the levels involve water such as Sunken Vegas. Some take
place in frozen Arctic regions where ice caps and glaciers must be
skipped across. There's also the rocky inner of a volcano or the grounds
of a haunted castle. I also noticed the occasional glitch in the scenery
where solid walls suddenly become see-through, but thankfully this only
appears now and then and doesn't ruin the gameplay.

The characters move along quite fluidly, although there is little sense
of speed. As soon as the race begins the jets from the rear of the boat
roar into action lifting the nose of the craft into the air and dipping
the propeller into the water creating a light foam trail. Some of the
best visual effects are shown when using the weapons and power-ups.
Homing missiles light up the scenery like an emergency flare would,
shields see the vehicle wrapped in an electric force field, while mines
are thrown nonchalantly from the rear of the boat detonating upon
impact.

The music isn't really anything special. It's a quirky, fun selection of
tunes that we normally associate with cartoons on TV or in video games.
The sound effects are also quite type-cast with all of the whooshes,
whizzes, bangs and crashes we have come to expect.

In summary the graphics really are up to the standard we have come to
expect on the Playstation. Let's find out if the gameplay offers
anything new.